Synology NAS

The mediacenter PC is performing nicely since my last upgrade. The only change made was a change in keyboard. In January 2011 I got the Logitech DiNovo Mini. I blogged about it in 2008: "The price is prohibitive and I don't particularly like the style, but it has a high gadget factor." The price came down somewhat and I guess I changed my mind about the style.
In April 2011 the Windows Home Server installation ran into some problems and I decided to replace it with a Synology NAS, the DS211j.

HTPC upgrade

Last December the HTPC got a complete makeover, only the case and the PSU were reused. The upgrade was needed to be able to playback HD content. While I was at it, I decided to throw in a Solid State Harddisk. All media is streamed from the server anyway, so there's no need for terabytes of storage on the HTPC.

This is the new setup:

- Greenpower HTPC case GL-1c with VFD display

- ASUS M4A785G HTPC micro ATX mother board, 785G chipset

- 2.8GHz AMD Athlon II X2 240e CPU, socket AM3

- Stock AMD heatsink and cooler

- 2GB memory, Kingston ValueRAM, DDR2, 800MHz, PC2-6400, CL6

- 30GB SSD, OCZ Vertex Turbo Series, 2.5", SATA-300

- Coolermaster PSU 400W

- ASUS BR 04B2T BluRay optical drive, ROM, 4x, Serial ATA, 5.25"

- Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium operating system, English

- Logitech Harmony 655 remote

- MCE USB infrared receiver

- BTC 9029URF III keyboard

Server Upgrade

Today the server got an upgrade: 1.5 TB of additional storage. Installing was a breeze, Windows Home Server takes care of the formatting and adding it to the storage pool.
I chose another Samsung Spinpoint, because I like how silent these are. Soon I'll remove the 160GB Maxtor hard drive from the server, because I don't need a third disk and I want to minimize power usage.

The server setup is now:

• CPU: Intel Celeron 440 2.0GHz, 800MHz FSB
• Mobo: Gigabyte EP35-DS3, Intel P35 Chipset, ATX
• Memory: 1x Kingston Dimm 1GB DDR2 PC2-6400
• Video: none
• Sound: MoBo intgrated
• CPU cooler: Cooler Master Hyper TX 2
• HD 1: Samsung SpinPoint F1 750GB, SATA, 3.0Gbps
• HD 2: Samsung Spinpoint F2EG 1.5TB, SATA, 3.0Gbps
• HD 3: Maxtor 160GB harddisk, PATA
• Case: Cooler Master Centurion 5
• Power: Medion Power Supply 250W
• OS: Windows Home Server UK
• TV card 1: Hauppauge PVR350
• TV card 2: Hauppauge PVR150

Samsung TV

Finally, I own a digital flatscreen TV. After long and careful consideration I put my money on the Samsung 40B7020. It's full HD, 100Hz. The all new LED backlighting technology results in deeper blacks, a relatively low power consumption and a very thin - only 3 cm - screen. This particular model comes with an ethernet connection and all kinds of network and internet functionality. It's a Media Center in itself!

Maui Platform HTPC

Tom's Hardware has an interesting piece on building an HTPC based on AMD's Maui platform and Windows 7. Silent PC Review and others reported on the platform in November and what's interesting is that the audio amplifiers can be integrated in the HTPC.
Not for me though, my 13 kilogram AV receiver won't be exchanged for an amplifier on a PCI express card. I'll keep feeding it digital signal exclusively.

Pre-configured HTPC roundup

While personally I'm happily tinkering around with individual pc components, the internet hardware stores provide pre-configured HTPCs as well. What can we learn from their hardware choices? A small round-up of the HTPC offerings in the dutch internet PC stores.

Judging from the amount of choice, Media Center PC's still don't account for a significant amount of computer sales. Compare that to the amount of choice in HTPC cases that's on offer and the conclusion must be that Media Center PC's are still the domain of DIY PC builders.

The bigger real-life stores offer nothing but disapointment. MyCom, Computerland as well as Media Markt have no Media Center PC's at all. Paradigit offers an OEM system from ASUS, the Aspire L5100-tv. This is pretty much an ordinary small form factor desktop with a tv card. It doesn't have a display or a remote control.


From the web stores, only very few carry pre-configured HTPC systems. Salland sticks out with a range of different systems. Their latest "Gold" model comes at a stunning 1031 euro and that's without operating system or a tv card! It's based on a 3 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 processor on a Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4 motherboard. The case is a Zalman 160D. Fortunately Salland also offers more affordable "Silver" and "Bronze" models. Most are based on Intel the 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E8200.


Informatique has a single configuration on offer called the Informatique inDigho-a HTPC. It's priced at 649 euros. Add a Floppy DTV card and the total is 804 euro for a complete system. It's based on a 2.3GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 4450e processor on an ASUS M3A78-EM motherboard. The case is the ever popular Antec Fusion.


Comptech has two systems on the website. Both run on the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850E processor. The CTW Media Center Deluxe has a Asrock K10N78HSLI mother board and a TopMedia case. It's priced at 579 euro, including Vista but excluding any tv cards.
The Media Center AMD is based on the MSI Media Live barebone with
nVidia C51PVG / MCP51 Chipset. The price of 699 euro is without a tv-card.



Without a doubt, QMotion is building the Rolls Royce under the dutch Media Center PCs with the DVB 400i. The folks at QMotion clearly want to market a piece of consumer electronics as opposed to a PC. The website lacks specifications like the type of motherboard and the size of the harddisk. What is clear is that this product is well thought through. It features a dual DVB tuner with a single CAM, and the manufacturer has developed an online service to help the user configure the tv channels. The case is a Origen AE S10V Black, the processor an unspecified Intel Dual Core. At 1849 euro it's not the cheapest though.

Network troubleshooting

With the server hardware up and running, there is plenty of troubleshooting to do. My network now consists of a server and two client pc's, connected by 100Mbps ethernet and a router that I use a switch. The router is also connected to an ADSL modem that's also a router.

First of all, the network was behaving weird. Even though all three pc's had the same workgroup name specified, not all of the pc's were showing up when browsing the workgroup node in Windows explorer. Upon further research I found out that "ping" worked for the ip addresses of the pc's, but not always for the computer names. Eventually I learned that without a WINS server on my network, NetBIOS name resolution didn't work properly. I was able to solve this by creating LMHOSTS lookup files on all of the pc's.

Another problem, that I originally linked to the network problem, was very slow file transfers to and from the Media Center PC. When copying a bigger file, the CPU usage went up to nearly 100% while the network usage remained at less than 25%. Over a 100 Mbps network, that equals about 3MB/s, while the harddisk is capable of 133 MB/s (UltraDMA 6). Only after I solved the network problem did I find out that this even occurred while copying files locally on the Media Center PC. First I tried all sorts of driver updates for motherboard and hard disk. After running a Samsung hard disk self diagnostics program and trying the disk in an external drive case, I came to the conclusion that the disk was fine. A forum post directed me to look at the IDE channel transfer mode in the device manager. It appears that Windows XP sets this transfer mode back to PIO indefinitely, after six DMA failures. This PIO transfer mode was the culprit for my high CPU load and low transfer rates. Getting it back to DMA mode requires an uninstall of the IDE driver. Windows XP automatically reinstalls it at the next reboot.

The good thing from all of this is that the Samsung hard disk utility enabled me to set the UltraDMA mode from the default 5 to the maximum of 6. That improves the theoretical transfer rate of the harddisk from 100 to 133 MB/s at no cost.

Home Server Hardware

The hardware for my Home Server/ TV Server is in!

CPU: Intel Celeron 440 2.0GHz, 800MHz FSB
Mobo: Gigabyte EP35-DS3, Intel P35 Chipset, ATX
Harddisk: Samsung SpinPoint F1 750GB, SATAII
Memory: Kingston Dimm 1GB DDR2 PC2-6400
Case: Cooler Master Centurion 5
OS: Windows Home Server UK

To be supplemented by some re-use components:
Power Supply 250W
2 Hauppauge analogue TV cards
Maxtor 160GB harddisk

Windows Home Server

With a desktop PC and a Media Center PC in my house, I've been contemplating a means of central storing for a while. With a wide array of NAS devices, what's to choose? And why not a full server? With the availability of Windows Home Server since last year, the answer is easy: Let's build a server!

With a broadband network in the house, separating the data from the user interface makes sense! A separate device in the house for storage of music, video and pictures is the future. More and more media-extenders are hitting the market that plug network data directly into your audio and video equipment. Many consumer electronic devices even come with a media extender included.
With a dedicated device, all this media is available instantly anywhere in the house. Or, anywhere in the world, if the device is attached to internet.

All of this can be supported by an off the shelf NAS device. A full server is only required to support tv server functionality. The MediaPortal community has been developing tv server software for a while now, separating the tv cards from the mediacenter pc. This, and the fact the hundreds of GB of harddisk capacity are no longer needed in the mediacenter pc, offers new potential for the ultimate sleek and silent htpc.
WHS makes RAID-like protection of your essential data easy. Already I have double copies of my pictures and music collections on different hard drives, but synchronizing remains a pain in the butt.

With that in mind, we're looking for an energy efficient and affordable server solution, with slots and room for up to 4 tv cards.

Microsoft released a hilarious "children book" about Windows Home Server:



Or view page by page, here.

Keyboard (2)

My Media Center madness knows no boundaries. When shopping for paint for my house, I found the shop's paint blending machine was equipped with a very tiny keyboard with integrated trackball. How neat would that look in the living room? A trackball is much more precize than the little joystick-like device I have on my keyboard. On the downside: it was attached by a cable. Of course, I had to ask the shop attendant if I could inspect their equipment from up close. On the back it said iOne, and after I had bought my paint and returned home, I found their website. Sure enough, they do have similar keyboards in multiple wireless versions.

The best choice appears to be the Scorpius P20MT model. It combines a compact sized keyboard with 10 meters of RF range, multimedia keys and a trackball.

Update April 24th 2008:

Logitech released an innovative design for a Media Center PC keyboard with the diNovo Mini. It features bi-colored back lighting and a multifunctional touch pad. As with all products in the diNovo line: the price is prohibitive and I don't particularly like the style, but it has a high gadget factor.

And if you like using a laptop style touchpad, your keyboard of choice may very well be the Adesso SlimTouch Wireless. Their site also features other interesting keyboards.

Antec Fusion HTPC case

Tom's hardware has posted a review of the Antec Fusion HTPC case. The timing seems odd, this product is not exactly new on the market. But they did a thorough job and it is a nice case.

Keyboard

I bought myself a nice keyboard. Generally speaking, you don't really need a keyboard and mouse for operating the mediacenter, but sometimes... There's a couple of things I like about this keyboard. For one, it has built-in mouse functionality. So you can operate it from the couch on your lap, without having to locate a mouse and a suitable surface first. The 10 meter range is a must for this as well, I found my desktop keyboard and mouse did not cover the less than four meters between couch and mediacenter. There's no numeric keypad, keeping the keyboard small and easy to store in the living room. Finally, the price is acceptable: 60 US dollars. The unit is MCE certified and has 16 multimedia hotkeys along the top. Let's see how that works with MediaPortal!

Remotes

A Media Center PC is operated from the couch and therefore you need a remote. Remotes come in all shapes and sizes. Most remotes only send a one-way signal to your home theatre equipment, but Windows Vista is inspiring the introduction of several interesting two-way remotes. The Ricavision Sideshow Remote is an example. The 2.5" color screen is what catches the eye, but what's really new is that the display shows information from the Media Center PC. So this will enable you to select music from the harddrive without switching your tv on! This device was announced in December and is supposed to cost about US$ 200, but I haven't seen it actually for sale yet.

The functionality is based on the Sideshow feature of Windows Vista. The remote will show and control any gadget that you prefer to include in the Sideshow bar. The question is of course how this functionality will transfer to other HTPC front-end software packages than Vista MCE. And how this will integrate into multi functional remotes like the Logitech Harmony.

My personal preference would still be two separate devices. One "simple" remote with buttons that you can feel and operate blindfolded. And a more sophisticated, touch screen operated, PDA type remote that shows the Media Center user interface. Finally the keyboard and mouse will serve as a backup only.

Now, the simple remote should be as simple as possible. I think there should be a minimum set of buttons and that the software user interface should be designed such that it's fully operable with this minimum set of commands.
The minimum set of buttons is:
- On and off buttons that will not only operate the mediacenter pc but also the receiver, tv set, etc.
- The standard buttons for play, pause, stop, fast forward, rewind, previous and next. I don't think the "record" button is particularly useful anymore. You'll often see that commands like "forward" and "next", or "play" and "pause" are combined in a single buttons. I think that should be outlawed
- Channel + and -
- Volume + and -
- Arrow buttons that will shift the focus on screen from one item to the next
- An "OK" button that will select the highlighted item
- A "menu" button that will show all options for the highlighted item
- A "back" button that will get you back to the previous screen without selecting anything
- The 0-9 buttons are optional. These clutter up the remote and I don't see a real need. Selecting channels with numbers is out-dated. And while the number buttons can be used for text message style editing of text, I don't see that as particularly user friendly either.
- Nice-to-have is a "home" button that will get you back to the start screen from wherever you are in the user interface.
- Another nice-to-have is a couple of multifunctional buttons, that are specific to your hardware setup or your preferences as a user. These buttons should be next to a display that shows what the actual functionality of these buttons is.

Under the hood

HTPC components:
- Greenpower HTPC case GL-1c with VFD display
- ASUS P4S533MX micro ATX mother board,
533MHz FSB, AGP4x, 3x PCI, Ultra DMA133
- 2.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 CPU, 533MHz FSB
- Zalman CNPS5700D Cu CPU cooler (without the air duct)
- 512MB memory, PC2700
- 250GB Samsung Spinpoint SP2514 hard drive , 7200rpm
- Coolermaster PSU 400W
- Lite-on DVD ROM drive
- XP Home Edition SP2 operating system
- Hauppauge PVR350 analog TV card
- ASUS V9520 Magik T videocard, chipset NVidia GeForce FX5200 (128 MB)
- Creative SB Audigy Platinum sound card
- Logitech Harmony 655 remote
- MCE USB infrared receiver
- BTC 9029URF III keyboard

Evolution

The first mediacenter that entered my living room - October 2003 - was merely intended as an MP3 player. I had heard of this new invention called "time shifting" so I bought a Hauppauge TV card as well. The PVR-350 came with hardware encoding and a remote. Another use that I could think of was digitizing my LPs, so that's why I got a Soundblaster Audigy Platinum.

All of this was mounted in a Lian-Li desktop case. It fitted full size PCI cards and two 5.25" front slots. It was a full size desktop model, not a sleek small little gadget. I never really understood why people care so much for ultra small barebone cases for their media centers. Small means less options for heat dissipation, more heat means more noise. My advice if you're on a budget: buy a big ugly case and put it away in a cabinet. You only look at the case when you put a DVD in anyway.

For watching tv, the PVR-350 was delivered with the WinTV2000 application. It was pretty decent and, as advertised, it could pause and resume live tv! Not before long I discovered that the remote could be tweaked by editing a remote.ini text file. I spent hours mapping shortcut keys of many applications to keys on the remote.

I also developed a couple of HTML pages that could launch these applications, again using shortcut keys. The Hauppauge remote itself was very basic, so I exchanged that for a universal remote by Sony. So far, I'd been using three separate remotes for tv, receiver an mediacenter. Obviously that makes watching TV quite an operation. But the Sony remote had a nice option to direct the volume signals to the receiver, even while the other buttons still operated the mediacenter. So at least I could get by with one remote most of the time.

From the start, I used a Zalman CPU cooler. Over time, I changed the cheap case fans with more state-of-the-art Pabst fans. And, although the power supply was advertised as "low noise" it was rattling disturbingly through my music. So I took the fan out and replaced it as well. And when the harddrive was up for expansion, I switched from a Maxtor Diamond Plus to the Samsung Spinpoint. It does make a difference!

Another nuissance from the early days was that the analog audio out created a big burst of noise at every change of channel. It was so bad I used to swap channels with the receiver on mute. That only stopped when I changed my good old Pioneer stereo receiver to a digital Marantz AV receiver. The Marantz receiver also marked the entry of surround sound in my living room. Now, sound from every corner of the room is nice, and some special effects in dvd's work really well. But what makes 5.1 sound worthwhile is the center speaker. Having the actors or the news reader talk from a place near the tv makes speach much easier to understand. I watch tv in the Circle Surround II mode, but I still prefer my music in plain and simple stereo.

The last major change was the case. I ran into this GreenPower case that would look really nice with the receiver, plus it has a VFD display and would fit a more silent power supply. And voilà, that's the setup at the time I started this weblog.

A short introduction to my hardware

Let me introduce you to my setup. First, there's the media center PC itself. Then, I use a Marantz SR5500 A/V receiver and a Samsung CRT television set. The front and center loudspeakers are home-built kit speakers. And for the vinyl collection, there's a Thorens TD125 turntable.

A more detailed description will follow in a future post, but here's some features of the PC:
- Greenpower HTPC case with VFD display
- 2.4GHz Pentium 4 CPU
- 160 GB Samsung spinpoint hard drive.
- Hauppauge PVR350 analog TV card

The Marantz SR5500 receiver is a 7 channel A/V receiver. I chose it for its wide range of supported standards and the sound quality as reported in the reviews. Also, it has options for multi-room support and control through an RS232c serial port, even though I haven't used those features so far. I'd say the Marantz will serve all my needs for at least a decade.

The Samsung CX-5235W tv set does as fine a job as you can expect from a CRT. It has detachable speakers, which is nice when the sound comes through the receiver anyway. Obviously, it is high on my list for an upgrade. I'm thinking flat, high definition and a quality pc-interface. But before I make up my mind, there's quite a few things to learn about interlacing, progressive scan and pixel mapping.

For surround sound, I use five loudspeakers. The front and center speakers are all built by yours sincerely. The design is Scirocco by Speaker and Co., a small dutch chain of DIY hifi loudspeaker enthusiasts. The front speakers also reach the low ranges, so I don't need a subwoofer.
The rear speakers are near antique, these have been in the family for over thirty years.

Another touch of history is the turntable. I picked up collecting records well after the introduction of CDs, mainly because it's so much fun searching flea markets for eighties stuff. It's a Thorens TD 125 MKII with a SME III arm.